I caught part of last weekend's This American Life while I was driving around running errands on Saturday. The show is called "Red State, Blue State." (Transcripts aren't available yet, but you can listen online by clicking links from the pages I'm pointing to.)
Act One, "I Know You Are, But What Am I?" discussed political disputes coming between friends and family. Here's the teaser:
We surveyed hundreds of people around the country, from every part of the of political spectrum, about the ways in which politics are interfering with their friendships and families. Producer Lisa Pollak reports. (20 minutes)
We collaborated with American Public Media’s Public Insight Network to find some of the interviewees for this story. Individual stories about how politics have affected personal relationships appear on their website.
Lisa also spoke with Phil Neisser and Jacob Hess, two political opposites and authors of You're Not as Crazy as I Thought (But You're Still Wrong), about their advice for how liberals and conservatives can have more productive conversations.
I think I might have to read the book, even if that means I have to buy it (no copy in my local library). I enjoyed the segment with the authors of the book (a liberal atheist and a conservative Mormon who committed themselves to understanding each other's positions on politics).
This segment starts about 17 minutes into the Act One recording. (click the "Launch Player" button at the linked page.)
Lisa Pollak interviews a woman who was upset about her liberal sister because, in her view, "liberals are selfish," and her sister was NOT selfish, so she was not able to understand how she could possibly be a liberal. The obvious conclusion — that her stereotype of people who disagree with her politically was incorrect or at least overly generalized — simply had not occurred to this person. It sounds laughable, but not far-fetched, if you spend any time whatsoever investigating comment sections on political blogs.
Then she turns to describing Phil Neisser and Jacob Hess's approach. Here's my transcript.
The kind of dialogue that Phil and Jacob are encouraging isn't about compromise. It isn't touchy-feely, but it is also not like debate.
In fact, for it to work, they say, you have to back off of the main goal that most people have in political conversations: persuading the other person to think like you do. Instead, you focus on trying to understand what the person believes, and why he or she believes it. The other person does the same for you.
Phil and Jacob say that for them, this led to difficult, uncomfortable conversations, but they ended up treating each other more generously.
I wanted to see this in action, so I arranged for the two sisters… to get on a conference call with Phil and Jacob and try out some of their techniques.
The conference call doesn't quite work out, but the rest of the segment is good. I recommend it.
I found myself thinking about dialogue — political and ecumenical. That bit about backing off the goal of persuading, and focusing on understanding, sparked my thinking.
In one sense, dropping the immediate goal of persuasion and concentrating on understanding is practical — even if persuading is your ultimate goal.
—So often, failing to understand each other actually stands in the way of persuading, because we so often believe straw-men versions of the other's ideas. If you really try to understand what they believe and why they believe it, you have a much better chance of identifying real error that you might be able to point out.
— Furthermore, if you can find real common ground between the two of you — which you can only find if you understand each other — it's possible to work to expand the common ground by identifying weakly held beliefs and dismantling them while promoting the good sense of the alternatives you offer.
–Also, mutual understanding establishes trust, and a trusting relationship is a firmer foundation from which to mount your attack.
In this model, persuading your opponent of the correctness of your views is the end you seek, and working hard at a good-faith effort to understand his reasoning is the means to the end. This is a very practical way of looking at dialogue between people who disagree with you.
It is certainly a common way of looking at true ecumenical dialogue. Mutual understanding and respect could also be sought as an end in itself, of course, and for secular purposes (including political purposes) this is quite fine, but this is not an ecumenism that we are called to as Christians, because we are always called to witness to the truth.
So you might say — particularly if you're trying to "sell" ecumenical dialogue to someone who is made nervous by it — that learning about other people's beliefs in their own terms, and nurturing respect for the intellect and emotions of the persons whose histories took them to the places they are — all that is good, not as an end in itself but as a means of better enabling the Christian to promote the Christian faith to these persons.
Understanding is the means, persuading is the end. So even if you say you're "letting go of the goal of persuading," and "focusing on understanding," well, secretly you aren't really letting go of that goal. You've only realized the utility of directly emphasizing understanding as a means to achieving persuasion, the real end.
But that's not actually correct, is it?
"Persuading your opponent of the correctness of your views" is not actually the end we seek. As Christians, our end (for ourselves and our opponents) is Christ.
Salvation!
And persuasion, through intellectual appeal, is only a means to that end. One means among many, in fact. With any given "opponent" (and should we really think of them as an opponent?), it's quite possible that you persuading him is not the means that God has in mind for his conversion.
Hard to imagine, though, that you understanding him and him understanding you couldn't help — both of you maybe.
So in my view, it's possible that dropping persuasion entirely from your sights is not only permissible, but laudable. Attempting to understand one another thoroughly — a true search for truth, that is, the truth about another person's thoughts, beliefs, and orientations– can be taken — not as an end in itself — but as the task of the day, every day. We should never lose sight of the end — Christ — but it's entirely okay to leave the job of persuasion entirely in His hands.
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